I crossed over 43,000 words for NaNoWriMo this weekend and brought my novel manuscript up over 62,000 words, so I’m very pleased with my progress on the project in the past three weeks or so. Tomorrow I’m going to print the manuscript out and have it spiral bound so I can take it with me on an upcoming flight.
We watched a bunch of movies this weekend. A very entertaining film called The World’s Fastest Indian starring Anthony Hopkins as a New Zealander who schleps his 42-year-old Indian (a motor-sickle, as he calls it) up to LA and tows it across the west coast to get to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to attempt to set a speed record for a vehicle of its class. Of course, he has many adventures and misadventures along the way. Inspired by a true story, I believe. It’s a delightful film. The first time I’ve heard Hopkins do an accent—he gets that metallic edge of a down under inflection into his voice.
Seven years ago, my wife and I were in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, when we saw a flier for a movie playing in the downstairs amphitheater, so we decided to check it out. It was called 42 Up, the sixth installment in a series of documentaries filmed by Michael Apted, beginning when he was a 22-year-old. He selected a dozen seven-year-olds, some privileged, some not, and interviewed them as a cross section of the London class system and the British zeitgeist. Without fail, he has returned to visit them at seven year intervals. All but one of the original dozen still participate, though various among them have dropped out and returned over the years. The original premise was: show me a child at 7 and I’ll show you the man, and it has been interesting to watch how that has and has not proved to be true. Some of the children of privilege had their lives mapped out from the age of seven. They knew their prep schools and colleges, and stuck to those plans.
On the other hand, Neil, the bright and inquisitive young boy who wanted to be an astronaut or a lorry driver turned into a homeless loner with mental issues who ended up in the Shetland Islands at one point and a local politician the next time we see him. The subjects have gotten married (some divorced), had children (or not), had grandchildren, started careers, changed jobs, moved out of the East End—or out of the country in a few cases. Gotten bald, fat, old, wise and, as we see in the newest installment (49 Up) more-or-less happy. Or content, at least. They’ve grown comfortable in their skins. It’s a terrific sociological exploration, and the good thing is that you can watch just the newest episode and get an overview of everything that’s gone on before. The first six documentaries are available in a boxed set now, and we’re considering going back to get more detail about the early years. The transformations between 14 and 21 are particularly striking.
Last night, we actually went out to the cinema, something we haven’t done in ages, to see The Queen. It’s a story that I believed I already knew fairly well—the struggle between Buckingham Palace and Tony Blair about how the monarchy should respond to Diana’s death in the days between her accident and the funeral a week later— and there weren’t many revelations that shook up my mental version of the story, but seeing it all played out on the screen was very nice. Mirren absolutely disappears inside the role, and the guy who plays Tony Blair is spot on. The actor who plays Charles doesn’t resemble him all that much, but before long you start believing he’s who he is depicting. I found it interesting that they chose an American actor, James Cromwell, to play Philip, but he captures the daffy, disconnected personage.
I grew up in a household where everything came to a stop on Christmas morning so we could watch the Queen’s message. My mother and the Queen are of an age, and the Queen mum and my grandmother are also contemporaries. The monarchy was important to my parents. I actually got to meet and shake Diana’s hand in the early 1980s when she and Charles visited the nearby town on a royal tour. She and I are the same age, but her bearing and presence were unbelievable. I will always remember the night she was killed—we were on a camping trip in Louisiana and had to move into a motel in Baton Rouge because the camp site water system went dry. I heard the news in the lobby while registering. I felt a great loss, and I wasn’t the only person. This movie does a fine job of recapturing that era in world history. Afterward, my wife and I tried to come up with the name of one other individual anywhere on the planet whose death would so profoundly cross generations and borders. We couldn’t think of anyone who would come close.
